uinness World Records (GWR) has confirmed what everybody already knew: that Harry Styles would set a new record for most performances by an artist in a single year at London’s Wembley Stadium. Indeed, his 12-night residency on the “Together, Together” tour, June 12-July 4, has officially achieved a new world record: the longest residency by a musician at Wembley Stadium during a single run.

On July 4, 2026, Italian superstar Ultimo brought together 250,000 fans at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, delivering what stands among the largest single-artist concerts ever staged in Europe.

Suno quickly seizes on Udio’s legal victory against Sony Music over admissible infringed works. Last week, a federal judge denied Sony Music’s motion to expand its lawsuit against AI company Udio to include another 30,000 allegedly infringed works. Now, Udio rival Suno has seized on that opportunity, asking the court to deny a similar motion in the lawsuit Sony filed against Suno, which would add some 60,000 copyrighted works to the case.

Superstruct Entertainment, the world’s second largest festival promoter, has hired Jacqui Harris as managing director.

The latest in a string of senior appoints at Superstruct, Harris joins the company from AEG Presents where she worked for more than 18 years, most recently as VP and general manager of the UK Touring division.

Americans love listening to American music, and the numbers are striking: 69% of all streams in the country go to American artists, and American music makes up 70% of the Spotify Top 50 chart in the U.S. in 2025. Listeners in the South and Midwest stream the most music made in America: In just the past week, Mississippi topped the list, followed by West Virginia, South Dakota, Alabama, and Louisiana.

Earlier this week, Digital Music News broke the news of a voluntary settlement proposal tied to upcoming US-based mechanical licensing rates as part of the broader Phonorecords V CRB proceedings. That settlement, which focused on a number of non-streaming formats, involved a ‘who’s who’ of organizations across the label, publishing, and, surprisingly, indie realms — though Irving Azoff’s Global Music Rights was noticeably edged out of the process.

One of the lesser-reported aspects of the rise of AI: it’s bringing corporate hackathons back. Musixmatch is the latest company inviting developers in to build with its API as well as those of partners.

Its ‘Musicathon’ was a global, online event that took place over seven days in June, with 523 developers building more than 100 AI tools and apps, with an emphasis on lyrics, song metadata and music search.

A white-hat hacker and security researcher discovered an AI exploit using chatbot Claude to gain full access to the systems that handle ticketing for nearly every major US festival.

In April, security researcher and “white-hat” hacker Ian Carroll used the AI tool Claude Opus 4.7 to discover an exploit that allowed him full access to the systems of Front Gate Tickets, which handles ticketing for nearly every major U.S. music festival, including Lollapalooza, South by Southwest, and Austin City Limits.

One of the more unexpected social-media trends of recent years has been short-video platforms reversing back into photos. TikTok has photo posts, and YouTube Shorts has too.

Now music is coming to the latter, with Shorts creators able to bundle up to 10 images into a carousel post and then “pair your images with up to 15 seconds of background audio” according to a new support post.

This April Threads launched Live Chats, which according to Meta “lets you participate in public group chats during the biggest cultural events. It’s a new way to build community with others around shared interests like an album drop or a big game as it unfolds.” 

To attend Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding, do you need to know the bride and groom all too well?

That’s the big question this week as fans, media and social sets in New York, L.A. and Nashville speculate over which lucky 1,000 people landed invites to the celebrity wedding of the decade this Friday night at Madison Square Garden.

Bruce Springsteen said during his recent PBS special, “Bruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song,” that being a true patriot is all about coming face-to-face with America’s flaws and encouraging the government and your fellow citizens to do better.

Some people see AI as a hellscape, but for the music industry, it’s an ‘L’ scape. Lawsuits, licensing and lobbying. And there’s no better way to understand that than reading the quarterly and annual financial reports by the major labels since 2020.

As you’ve probably heard, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce got married on Friday and summoned a firestorm of non-stop media coverage. In case you’ve had a hard time keeping pace, let this be your guide to all the most important details of the star-studded ceremony at Madison Square Garden.

Spotify has removed about 500,000 streams from Malcolm Todd’s hit song “Earrings” days after the song topped the platform’s daily U.S. chart for the first time, as its surge has been tied to manipulation based around bets on the prediction market Kalshi.

Spotify has asked both Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its logos from their websites, a source at the company confirms to The Hollywood Reporter, further underlining that the streaming service has never had a partnership with either company.

The US is the biggest recorded-music market in the world, and it’s one where domestic artists are taking a big share of streams according to Spotify.

“69% of all streams in the country go to American artists, and American music makes up 70% of the Spotify Top 50 chart in the U.S. in 2025,” claimed the company in a blog post pegged to the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence.

The first Phonorecords V settlement leaves songwriters with more questions than answers: little evidence of meaningful negotiation, no discussion of AI, and—for the first time—a statutory rate structure that could actually allow the minimum mechanical royalty to decline.

56% of American adults polled said they would support a ban on anyone under the age of 16 from using social media sites. 21% would oppose it, and 23% said they are not sure.

Music industry veteran Jonathan Shank has joined Live Nation as senior vice president of global programming, where he will focus on expanding family entertainment and non-traditional immersive live formats.

Which team are you supporting in the World Cup? We don’t mean England, Mexico or Cape Verde. We’re talking Team Jagger, Team Richards or Team Wood!

Yes, the Rolling Stones are piggybacking on the men’s football extravaganza with their own ‘Streaming World Cup’ as part of the marketing campaign for their new ‘Foreign Tongues’ album.

Global live booking agency ROAM has appointed Duncan Smith as a senior agent. Smith joins from Earth Agency, where his roster included  MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Getdown Services, Lime Garden and Racing Mount Pleasant.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have donated $26 million to at least 20 charities this week, a representative announced, in advance of a wedding reported to be taking place this weekend in New York.

The pair have still not officially acknowledged that nuptials are about to take place, and even the announcement of the charitable efforts does not mention the wedding, though it’s clear that the donations are part of this week’s celebrating.

The deal agreed between the US Department Of Justice and Live Nation earlier this year, settling the DoJ’s antitrust lawsuit against the live music company, has been heavily criticised. But in new court papers the DoJ defends the deal, saying it will deliver solid live sector reforms much quicker